New laser propulsion experiments are
throwing light on how to build future hypersonic aircraft and beam spacecraft
into Earth orbit.
Indeed, a
"Lightcraft revolution" could replace today's commercial jet travel. Passengers
would be whisked from one side of the planet to the other in less than an hour -
just enough time to get those impenetrable bags of peanuts open. Furthermore, beamed
energy propulsion can make flight to orbit easy, instead of tenuous and
dangerous.
That's the
belief of Leik Myrabo an aerospace engineering professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
in Troy, NY. He's an
expert in directed energy applications, aerospace systems, space prime power,
and advanced
propulsion.
For the
past three decades, Myrabo's burning desire has been to create and demonstrate
viable concepts for non-chemical propulsion of future flight vehicles through
his research and company Lightcraft Technologies, Inc., of Bennington, Vt.
"Typically,
a new propulsion technology takes 25 years to mature...to the point where you can
actually field it. Well, that time is now," Myrabo told SPACE.com.
Real
hardware...real physics
The
brightest new news in beamed energy propulsion is that experiments are now
underway at the Henry T. Nagamatsu Laboratory of Hypersonics and
Aerothermodynamics at the IEAv-CTA in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brazil.
The work is
being sponsored under international collaboration between the United States Air
Force Office of Scientific Research and the Brazilian Air Force.
Basic
research experiments using high-powered
lasers are underway in Brazil, with experts investigating the central
physics of laser-heated airspikes and pulsed laser propulsion engines for future
ultra-energetic craft.
At the
Brazil-based lab, a hypersonic shock tunnel is linked to two pulsed infrared
lasers with peak powers reaching the gigawatt range - the highest power laser
propulsion experiments performed to date, Myrabo said.
"In the lab
we're doing full-size engine segment tests for vehicles that will revolutionize
access to space," Myrabo emphasized. "It's real hardware. It's real physics.
We're getting real data...and it's not paper studies."
"Right now,
we're chasing the data," Myrabo said. "When you fire into the engine, it's a
real wallop. It sounds like a shotgun going off inside the lab. It's really
loud."
The laser
propulsion experiments, Myrabo added, are also relevant to launching nanosatellites
(weighing 1 to 10 kilograms) and microsatellites (10 to 100 kilograms) into low
Earth orbit.
Highways
of light
Creating
and flying Myrabo's "highways of light" has been a methodical and step by step
undertaking.
Back in
1996 through 1999, he flew Lightcraft prototypes via a 10 kilowatt high-power
infrared laser at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico. In 2000 - sponsored
under a grant to his company - he established a new world altitude record of over
230 feet (71 meters) for laser-boosted vehicles in free fight.
Myrabo
points to his new book "Lightcraft Flight Handbook, LTI-20," co-authored with
John Lewis and recently published by Apogee books, to explain his quest for
low-cost, safe space access with beamed-powered Lightcraft.
"The physics
of high-power beamed energy propagation through the atmosphere...there's not
a lot of expertise out there to make this stuff real. It's completely out of
the conventional box," Myrabo said. "I've been working on it for 30 years. I
know how to do it."
For
decades, Myrabo said, what laser propulsion physicists have been hungry to
achieve is a couple of dollars per watt of laser energy. "We're here now. It's
a matter of will and do we want to do it. This technology is now at the cusp of
commercial reality."
Leonard
David has been reporting on the space industry for more than four decades. He
is past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space
World magazines and has written for SPACE.com since 1999.
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